“So, this friend of Condor’s, he’s on the up and up?” Christine asked, trying to change the subject, which was getting way too emo for comfort.
“Yeah, Lester Harris has worked with the Lurker all his life,” Mark replied, also glad to talk about something else. “It’s a family thing; his great-grandfather was with the Lurker back in the 1930s. The Lurker’s had a lot of human helpers over the years. A lot of the old-time mystery men did – they were Type Ones, and they didn’t know they weren’t normal humans at first. Eventually the vanilla sidekicks kept getting killed so often that most Neos stopped using them. The Lurker still has a network of informants and investigators, though.”
“I see. That reminds me of, surprise squared, another question: do you have a lot of normal humans putting on costumes and trying to be superheroes?”
“Used to happen a lot at first, but not that much anymore. The lucky ones get a close call or two and realize that if you can’t heal from injuries like a Neo, you aren’t going to last very long in this game. The others… I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Christine nodded. In the real world, a normal person would catch a bullet sooner or later, or end up totally messed up from assorted injuries or even repetitive stress syndrome from all the ass-kicking. And if the wannabe hero ran into someone who could melt someone’s face off with a glance or whatever – yeah, that would suck.
“The Lurker’s people mostly stay out of harm’s way. Lester helped Condor and the Lurker coordinate their hunt for a Neo serial killer. He did a lot of the legwork but didn't join in the action. Condor and the Lurker inflicted all the violence. Much safer that way.”
While they talked, the Condor Jet, still invisible, descended until it was facing a large warehouse and hovering – and vibrating again, much to Christine’s discomfort – a few feet off the parking lot. A wide rolling door in front of the warehouse rolled up. The entrance didn’t look quite big enough for the Condor Jet, but Condor expertly guided the aircraft through it and set the ship down as the door slowly rolled shut behind them.
“All right, we are here. Thank you for flying Condor Airlines. Now get the hell out,” Condor announced.
As they exited the aircraft, Christine could see the ship's insides and the ramp leading out. The rest of the aircraft remained invisible except for a very vague shimmer around the edges, better than the camouflage screen in Predator. How does he do it? Christine wondered, and as the exit hatch closed and the aircraft became completely invisible again, she decided to use her Christine senses on it. She still hadn’t quite figured out exactly how to trigger her super-vision thingy, but after she squinted long enough it kind of just happened.
She got an eyeful. The Condor Jet looked very visible to her Christine-vision. Another bundle of swirling lights was overlaid over the frame of the aircraft, and it was somehow connected to Condor, as if it was an extension of him. She was beginning to get a feel for how super-gizmos worked; the creator somehow used his own aura or Chi or whatever to empower the devices. Pretty cool.
Condor and Kestrel were carrying luggage, so they probably had brought along some civilian clothes, but they currently were wearing their skin-tight outfits. Good thing they were indoors; the locals would have probably noticed two people in costumes appearing out of an invisible plane. Mark was in civvies, so he looked fine except for the faceless bit. Christine had politely declined to wear her Condor groupie costume in favor of her regular second-hand clothes, which unfortunately were all she had. She’d been in New York all day yesterday and she hadn’t done any shopping. That was just wrong. Maybe after they had set up an appointment with the Lurker she might get to buy something else to wear.
The warehouse looked like it hadn’t been used for anything for some time. There was a large Humvee-like vehicle next to the roll-down door. Christine wondered if there was enough clearance for the car to drive out now that the Condor Jet was filling up most of the warehouse space. An older guy – forty-something at least – in a business suit was standing next to the car. Said older guy shook hands with Condor. They made their introductions while they loaded their luggage into the car.
“Good to see you again, Lester,” Condor said after they were loaded up. Lester did not look particularly happy to see Condor, or happy about much of anything for that matter.
“Wish I could say the same,” Lester said. “I almost called you to tell you not to show up, but then I figured the boss could use some backup.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just found out this morning. Somebody’s looking for him. Somebody who’s not afraid to leave bodies behind if they don’t get what they want. And they want the Lurker.”
Condor glanced at Mark. “What do you think, Face?”
“I think I don’t believe in coincidences. We are looking for the Lurker and now it turns out someone else is? What are the odds the two things are unrelated?” Mark turned to Lester. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“Okay,” Lester said, looking nervouser and nervouser. “When you called last night, I left word with the boss that you were coming to town. We don’t exactly socialize, you know. We mostly communicate via dead drops and coded messages. There is something else we use for emergencies, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. I’m getting worried.”
“Yeah, I know how he operates,” Condor agreed. “What happened this morning?”
‘I got a call from one of my people. Said he’d heard about some tough guys asking about the Lurker and spreading cash around for information. Also, a local police informant was found late last night. Dead. Someone had used a blowtorch on him. It wasn’t pretty. The dead guy’s worked with my people before; going after him would be a good place to start for someone who’s trying to find the boss. I think you can do the math.”
“Yeah, and it’s not adding up to anything good,” Condor said. “Any ideas on who might be looking for the Lurker?”
“I’m not sure. My guy thinks it might be the Russian mob, but that makes no sense.”
Christine picked up an emotion spike from both Condor and Mike when they heard the word 'Russian.' Kestrel didn't seem to give a crap either way, although she'd been the one who had told them the Russian mob was looking for Christine in New York.
“What made him think it's the Russians?” Condor asked.
“The blowtorch stuff. It's sort of a signature move of the local Russian outfit. They weren't very subtle about it.”
“Oh, this is no fucking good at all,” Mark commented, seconds before one of the warehouse walls exploded.
Things got really not effing good after that.
Hunters and Hunted
Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
Vladimir Vladimirovich kept his cool, much as he wanted to start blabbering like his men were. “Shut the fuck up,” he growled, and his men did. People usually did what Vladimir told them to if they knew what was good for them.
“That’s the Condor,” Grisha, his second in command, whispered, pointing at the screen showing the interior of the warehouse. “He’s got his invisible plane in there. I read an article on People Magazine about it.”
“You’re reading People now, Grisha?” one of the men in the back seat said.
“Fuck you, it was my wife’s and I was bored.”
“If you fucked your wife more often, you wouldn’t be so bored.”
“I said shut the fuck up,” Vladimir said, but without much heat. He was too busy trying to think of a plan of action.
Vladimir Vladimirovich wasn’t a tall man, but he made up for it with his personality. He was over sixty years old, but thanks to his Neo abilities he looked about half that age, and thanks to those selfsame abilities he could take a grown man and break him in half with his bare hands. His position as a major player in the Russian Outfit in the United States was due to his skills more than to his Neolympian powers, however. He had been in one of the last graduating classes of the KGB, which even during the final days o
f the Soviet Union had remained a highly effective intelligence agency. He had risen high in the Russian underworld afterward, although he obscurely felt he had been denied a greater destiny in the process. Serving the Ukrainian motherfuckers who kept the Motherland weak and in disarray had always stuck in his craw, but a man did what he could and not a bit more. It couldn’t be helped.
His Neo talents weren’t many. Stronger than most men, but not very strong by Neo standards, he had a gift for languages that could be natural, and was a superb marksman with any ranged weapon, from bows to RPG-16s. Most of his achievements had been a result of his human ability to asses a situation and devise ways of dealing with it, regardless of who got hurt in the process.
He considered the situation at hand. The plan had been to follow that Harris cocksucker to see if he made contact with their target, the Lurker. Harris was meeting with other superheroes instead. Condor and three others. The woman in the whore’s outfit and the man with no face he knew. Kestrel and Face-Off, both crime fighters like Condor and the Lurker. The young girl was not familiar to him, but he would assume she was one of them as well. The most likely explanation was that the newcomers had shown up to help the Lurker. They might know where he was, or at worst they might provide useful hostages. Either way, that made them valuable targets. But could he take them? Besides him, he had his fellow Neo Boris in one of the other cars, plus fourteen men and the special weapons they had been given for the mission. Would that be enough?
Vladimir tried to contact his handler. Archangel did not respond. He left him a brief voice mail, hung up and went over the objective conditions he was dealing with. Should he continue to follow Harris and the new arrivals? If he did, nobody would blame him; those had been his instructions. Following a human lackey was one thing, however. Condor’s name was a legend with the underworld. What if the Neo discovered the robot device he was using to track Harris? It would be best to grab them now, before they were on the move. He made his decision.
“We take them. Alive, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Grisha replied. “Now we find out if those fucking toys we got from the Ukraine are any good.”
“They are good.”
“And if they are not?” Grisha asked.
“Then we’re fucked, every last one of us,” Vladimir responded, and all the men in the car laughed. Good. Keep their morale up, and maybe most of them would live. “So stop blabbing and get ready. Grisha, get the others.”
Grisha nodded and stepped out of the car to gather the rest of the team. They were parked in a shut-down auto shop half a block from the warehouse where Harris had been waiting for his friends. Vladimir had been observing the inside of the warehouse through the electronic eyes of a little mechanical flying bug that sent audio and video right into Vladimir’s wrist-comm, one of the many toys they had been given for their mission. The little device had followed Harris to the warehouse and filmed the arrival of Condor and his friends.
Vladimir had everyone out of their cars for a quick group conference. “Grisha and me, and you three,” he said, pointing at his best marksmen. “We use the special weapons. The rest of you, you have the Ukrainian blasters; those things are better than rocket launchers. Go in and keep the cocksuckers busy. Boris will lead the way.” Boris, the other Neo in the team, was a strongman who loved to use a huge mace-and-chain on his enemies. “Shoot at them, but remember, we want them alive.” Neos took a lot of killing, so he was willing to let his men shoot them up a bit if necessary. “Once they are down, don’t finish them off. Understand?” As long as one or two of them survived, he would be happy.
His men nodded. He looked them over. They were all tough and experienced, either ex-military or career criminals who had spilled blood long before their balls dropped, men who had grown up in the tough streets of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. None of them looked very eager to get into a firefight with several Neos, which proved they weren’t complete idiots, but they weren’t pissing their pants about it, either. That was good enough. They could handle this.
“Let’s go.”
Face-Off
Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
When things go wrong, they go wrong fast.
A whole section of wall exploded, close enough to shower us with flying, burning debris. A hot piece of brick bounced off my head. I ignored the impact and the pain, moving to interpose myself between Christine and whatever would be coming through the hole in the wall. Condor and Kestrel were on the move too. “Stay down!” I shouted at Christine. She wasn’t ready to get into a real fight. If her concentration lapsed during a crucial second, she could get killed. She did the sensible thing and dropped to the ground next to Lester, who was lying down already.
Men burst in through the shattered wall, shooting from the hip. They weren’t using regular guns. Their muzzles emitted blinking lights like camera flashes, and whatever they aimed at exploded. Ukrainian A-75s, copies of the ray guns that had wrecked the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Serious artillery, and rare as hell. I might survive one direct hit from them, but probably not two.
One of the men didn’t have a gun. He was wielding a morning star, a spiked metal ball at the end of a long chain. He was whirling that thing so fast it was a blur. A Neo, all right.
I had to duck and roll, narrowly escaping several blasts that carved deep trenches on the concrete floor of the warehouse. The Neo with the whirling ball and chain moved closer and the shooters spread out and kept a steady barrage of energy fire on us.
They’d come in ready to dance, and we were happy to oblige them. Condor reached into his utility belt while dodging around, and his hands came out full of stylized throwing knives – his claws, he liked to call them. He flung them all in one volley. Ball-and-chain used his spinning weapon as a shield, deflecting a few of the claws, but two of the attackers went down, twitching uncontrollably. The claws had built-in capacitors that released enough electricity to knock down a charging horse. Condor was feeling downright charitable if he was using his Taser claws on the fuckers. The electrical shock was unlikely to be fatal unless the target happened to have a pacemaker or a bad heart.
I wasn’t feeling charitable at all. I shot two of them while ducking their blaster fire. Nothing fancy, two in the chest for each of them. Then ball-and-chain tried to whack me with his toy. I sidestepped the spiked mace and managed to snag the chain before he could pull it away. Tug of war time, asshole. The idiot was a big guy, a good six seven, six eight, and probably weighted three hundred pounds' worth of muscle and high-density bones. All of which meant diddly-squat when I pulled on his chain and yanked him clear off his feet and right towards me, where he masked his buddies fire for a couple seconds. I welcomed him with a head-butt and an elbow to his face and he went down like a ton of bricks, dead or unconscious. Big and ugly was a lightweight, a mid-level Type One was my guess. I would have made sure he stayed down by snapping his spine with a kick or shooting him in the face, but when he fell his pals started blasting me again. I rolled away, moving too fast and erratically for them to get a hit.
In the meanwhile, Condor got one more and Kestrel, her trademark whip slashing out at supersonic speeds, beheaded three of the assholes. She wasn’t taking prisoners, either. Condor was probably going to be upset with her.
Another group had entered the warehouse while we slaughtered the first bunch. They had some sort of long, bulbous weapons attached to backpacks. I’d never seen anything like them before. Whatever those things were, I figured they had to be something worse than the Ukrainian ray guns. Even as Condor and Kestrel finished off the last two survivors of the first wave, I managed to shoot one of the newcomers. Four men with the backpack contraptions lived long enough to shoot back. That was enough.
Most energy weapons don’t create a visible beam. These things did. Twisting, almost tentacle-like streams of purplish-dark energy erupted from the weapons’ barrels and reached towards us. I rolled away, and saw one of the streams twist in the air and follow me. It
struck.
I’ve been hurt before. Quite a few times, actually, but nothing like this. What I felt when the twisting energy hit me was like a full-body terminal toothache, only worse. And that was only a side effect. All of my voluntary muscles stopped working and I collapsed in an ungraceful heap on the ground. I couldn’t even scream.
What with all the agony and suffering, it took me several seconds to realize my face was back. My real face was back and my powers were gone. Everything went dark and quiet after that.
Chapter Fourteen
Christine Dark
Chicago, Illinois, March 14, 2013
She was scared to look, but even more scared not to look, so she watched the carnage from the floor. Not too far away, Lester Harris had done the same and seemed to be trying to make himself as small a target as possible.
Condor, Kestrel and Face-Off charged the men coming into the warehouse. Condor was flinging some sort of throwing knives, Face-Off was firing a gun and Kestrel, unsurprisingly, was swinging a whip-like weapon. The bad guys were not using regular guns, but some sort of boxy short-barreled weapons that made things burn and blow up a lot better than guns. Phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range or something like that, was her guess.
Funny, if someone had asked her how she would deal with a firefight taking place a few feet from her face, Christine would have guessed she’d be curled up in a fetal position, losing bodily fluids from every available orifice. Instead, scared as she was, Christine was watching the action with the same rapt attention a football fan would during the Super Bowl.
The good guys and gal were fast and graceful, like ballerinas in a speeded-up video. They went through the bad guys like chainsaws on a bunch of papier-mâché mannequins, despite the fact they were dodging energy blasts and a guy swinging a spiked wrecking ball along the way. Except those weren’t mannequins, those were people, people who bled and screamed and died. It happened too fast for the horrible sights to really sink in. It didn’t seem real.
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